TPS OUTINGS are:

Outings in the sense of excursions. (We wouldn't presume to organise the other kind.)

Voluntary, involving groups of four to forty members and friends.

For anyone to suggest and/or organise one.

Of a short, local kind, like the recent visit to the Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford or wildly cosmopolitan and adventurous - like John's proposed trip to the Rodin Museum in Paris.

Inspired by people's passions - in the case of the two outings mentioned above, passions for painting and sculpture.

An inspiration for new poems - see below for examples.

A source of new understanding of a theme because we can pool our knowledge and challenge each other’s preconceptions.

A source of new insights into the nature of poetry or a better understanding of old insights, like this from Simonides, writing in the 6th/5th century BC:

"Painting is silent poetry,
and poetry is painting that speaks."

Incentives to understand each other's writing methods and ambitions. In this way, they can lead to new friendships and deepen existing ones.

Simply sources of enjoyment because, as Samuel Johnson wrote:

"To a poet nothing can be useless."

GUIDED WALK ON BRADGER’S HILL

On a very hot day, Barrie Hicks, a local wild-life expert, photographer and conservationist, led us round this Prime Site of Nature Conservation Importance. He showed how grazing restrains the growth of scrub, especially hawthorn, to retain the floral diversity of this attractive area of chalk down-land. On the walk, we saw evidence of a fox earth and a badger sett. Four different species of orchid in flower were found. We would never have spotted two of these (the twayblade and the bee orchid) without his help, amid all the other flowers and grasses.

Marysia noting a bee orchid

Pyramidal orchids

After returning to Jean’s for refreshments, we were treated to a slide-show. Barrie’s outstanding photos of landscapes, flora and fauna served to reinforce the appeal of the area, and to emphasise its fragility

Here are some of the follow-up poems for you to enjoy:

Bradger's Hill

We stand upon the chalky hill
where horse-shoe vetch and milkwort grow.
Quaking grass is dithering
every time the breezes blow.
We feel remote as cirrus clouds
far from the urban sprawl below.
The yellow rattle parasite
preys on tangled roots of grass
and greater pignut lodges here
although elsewhere it's rare and sparse.
That clever mimic, a bee orchid
attracts attention as we pass.
Up in the trees a chiff-chaff calls
his name, his name in high-pitched song.
A blackbird's fluting notes ring clear
and almost out of sight among
the clouds, a skylark tosses down
a melody five minutes long.
We see a one-time badgers' sett
converted to a foxes' den
holes where the scurrying rabbits bolt,
and nearby fields to visit when
the March hares madly chase and box
as next year Spring comes round again.

Ann Biddle

Whispering Grass

(a Rau’ata)

Too hot
Fine stem
Lilac/pink
Quivering
Cool at Jean’s

Cheryl Campbell

Bradger's Hill

Barely a spit
cut through the hill's skin
will reveal its heart –
a tilted mile of white rock.
Flints may blunt your spade
as you break the bed chalk,
the unnumbered remains of sea death.
Fight your way
through elder and dense bramble
and the hill's memory bank
will reveal striated terraces,
like a giant's staircase,
where a meagre harvest grew
above the marshy valley of the Lea.
Summers ago
we cut away the scrub with gloved hands,
reversing time's arrow,
and made an ellipse, a miniature down.
The hill recalled its past,
welcomed seed and carpeted the glade
with golden rock rose and wild thyme.
But now around its edge
thorn enemies muster
and with their hostile shade
usurp the secret haunts
of bee orchid and twayblade.
In only a few years,
if unopposed,
hawthorn will reassert its mastery
and in the Autumn
dogwood will stain the slopes
the colour of wine.

Brian Biddle

Bradgers Hill Luton

In the cloudless blue
An inferno grew
On the slopes of Bradgers Hill
Where the solar power
Of that mid-day hour
Made the whirring brain stand still
On these rounded downs
Of our chalkland town
Where the flocks once roamed all day
The red brick creeps
Over hills for sheep
And the past has seeped away
Where the shepherd’s horde
Kept a close cropped sward
And a home for the marbled white
The fescues fade
And the scrub invades
And the dogwood gains in height
But this shrubland fades
In the woodland glades
As the ash and the beech take hold
And the Chiltern downs
Don a sylvan crown
To submerge the hills of old
But the town preserves
This chalk reserve
In a conservation scheme
So the lynchets thrive
And the herbs survive
In the old agrian scene
So beside the hedge
Grows the glaucous sedge
Where the furtive ferrets dwell
And the eyebright shines
Where the kestrel climbs
To a height for the final kill
And the skylarks still
On Bradgers Hill
Trill – and the field mouse thrives.
But the best laid plan
Of mouse and man
May sadly not survive
For in the cloudless blue
An inferno grew
That may yet consume us still
So heed the warning
Of global warming
On the slopes of Bradgers Hill

Frank Batt

On Bradger’s Hill - A Police Enquiry

What's all this here?

We are here
to look into reports
of poems lurking in this meadow.
Grasses whisper:
they may be hidden by
wild orchids.
Hello, hello, hello! What's this?
A common orchid,
supported by his friends with spotty leaves,
breaks cover. We take down their particulars.
"Are there any more about like you, flower?"
They stand, exposed and pale, saying nothing.
But further up the path are other gangs
we bring to book,
some in purple mitres try to stun us
visually.
It's dangerous work -
quatrains may be detonated where we plod.
And look! The Chief Detective points to quaking
grass: why's it afraid? See, still and near,
that thin figure is the Twayblade:
thought he'd escape us, did he,
coming armed to this
innocent hillside?
We pursue new leads.
"What's the buzz?" we ask a bee orchid,
and in our notebooks write
unlikely observations.
First the legwork then hours of shifting paper -
if they are shielding stanzas we will find them.
For we are the poet police and know our orchids:
our work, too, is largely undercover
and when it's done may pass
unnoticed.